


in the dead of night (you lean towards despair)

by Skaptason



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Angst, Boston Bruins, Character Study, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-12 21:45:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19237705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skaptason/pseuds/Skaptason
Summary: It’s a crashing, sinking, drowning feeling. He’s suffocating under the weight of his inadequacy, the way it was too little, too late. The way he couldn’t be enough.Matt Grzelcyk, the Bruins’ only goalscorer, after game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final._______________________________________________(To put it succinctly: imagine achieving your dream in the worst way possible. Then multiply it by the most important game of your career. The pieces could take a hell of a time to put back together.)





	in the dead of night (you lean towards despair)

**Author's Note:**

> So it took a day to write this and then many more days to decide to post it. I never thought my first published work in Hockey rpf would be a Bruins character study but, here we are. The scenes after the buzzer absolutely broke my heart and this just like, flowed out over the night of June 12/13 when I started thinking about that late goal and how it would feel to achieve a dream in the worst way possible.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it? Promise it's not sad all the way through
> 
> (title from Bastille's Overjoyed)
> 
> <3 skaptason x
> 
> ***DISCLAIMER***  
> If you or anyone you know is or could be mentioned in this fic, it is not for you, please Do Not Read. This is a work of fiction and anything not in the public domain is purely speculative.

I.

Matt is nine years old. He’s been skating since he could walk and playing hockey nearly as long. And, well, of course he dreams.

 

_He’s standing on center ice at the Garden, dressed in his heroes’ black and gold. The crowds and crowds of people who turned out to see him play are making a noise louder than anything he’s ever heard, this beautiful deafening roar of joy and victory. He feels half drunk with it himself._

 

_The glorious weight of the Stanley Cup barely bothers him as he thrusts it into the air above his head. The crowd cheers louder as he screams in pure exhilaration. Boston will be celebrating tonight. They’ve won, the Bruins have clawed their way to the cup in seven tooth-and-nail games, and Matt won it for them. For the city that flows in his blood as oxygen does, the city he loves, the city that loves him right back. Nothing feels as good as this moment._

 

 

II.

Matt is eighteen years old, and his dream is halfway to becoming true. He’s pulling on the jersey he knows he was born to fill, his father watching with tears in his eyes. Matt’s a Bruin, finally, and it feels so right.

 

_It’s overtime, and Matt has never felt more alive. What higher stakes are there than this? One shot, one goal, and they take home the Cup. They’re so tangibly close. He barely has to think, barely reacts to a cross from a faceless teammate to where he’s standing almost at the point, and the puck is sliding in like a dream under the goalie’s outstretched leg. The buzzer blares, and Boston goes wild. Matt Grzelcyk, hometown boy, has won his team the greatest prize in hockey._

 

 

III.

Matt is twenty-five years old, and he’s done it. He’s scored for the Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final with a snipe from the faceoff circle.

 

It’s nothing like how he dreamed. It’s so far from how it should have happened that it makes him feel sick.

 

The puck flies in over Binnington’s shoulder but for perhaps the first time in his life, the sound of the buzzer elicits no feeling at all. He can’t celebrate, can’t throw himself into the boards, can’t pump his fist. What’s the point? This isn’t how it was meant to happen and there’s nothing he can do.

 

This _isn’t how it was meant to happen_.

 

Marchy skates up to him. He offers a fist bump and a shoulder check before peeling away for the line change, like this is routine, and there’s something fierce and wild and determined in his expression. They’re down 4-1 with two minutes left in the third and Marchy’s still fighting. Of course he is, the stubborn bastard.

 

(And Matt loves that, normally. Loves how no-one on this team goes down easy, not least of all Marchy with his harsh words and his hard hits and his brilliant, breathtaking play. But something’s broken in the way none of them even raise their hands when the puck goes in.)

 

It’s stupid, how he achieved his dream, in technicality. Instead of cellying harder than he ever has he’s ducking his head and struggling to hold back tears.

 

This isn’t how dreams are supposed to feel.

 

He waits for Jake without knowing why. Jake doesn’t smile, neither of them do, but a heavy arm is thrown around him. Matt lets himself lean into it, for a second, indulges his selfish need for congratulations. It still feels more like consolation. Like, sorry you could only do something when it’s too late. The closeness is comforting, though, for as long as it lasts, and Jake keeps contact with a head tap even when he pulls away, like he knows. Their eyes meet briefly and Matt sees every emotion mirrored in his friend’s eyes. They don’t need to exchange words. There aren’t any words that would help, anyway. Matt keeps his gaze on the floor as they skate together towards the bench, and thinks of second chances.

 

There’s no second chance.

There’s no miraculous comeback. There’s no legendary moment.

There’s just this:

Quiet.

 

The bench is silent. Matt sees the skaters bent double with exhaustion and despair and the heavy weight of failure. He watches as the fans in black and gold start pouring out. Watches as the Blues pile onto the ice, throwing their gloves and helmets in the air, faces lit up with ecstatic joy. It’s the wrong team crowding their goalie, the wrong team parading the Cup around. O’Reilly gets the Conn Smythe and all Matt can think is, it should have been Tuukka. He was benched for their last desperate push and Matt caught sight of his face through his mask, entirely blank as he sat down.

 

As he glances to his right, he sees Danny bent double, head down, curling himself into a tiny ball. Next to him, Sean and Charlie are staring dead-eyed out onto the ice. Matt gets that; it’s hard not to glare longingly at the Blue’s celebration. He tears his eyes away but what they land on is almost worse.

 

The last shift looks absolutely broken.

 

Bergy’s panting is visible even from the bench. His eyes are wild, like he can’t quite accept that this is it. Marchy’s leaning against the boards, hand to his mouth, and Matt’s never seen such a heartbroken look on the man’s face. Pasta’s kneeling like his legs can’t support the weight of losing the only game they had to win.

 

Z, standing further out, spits onto the ice. He must be in so much pain but his face is just resigned. He looks, suddenly, every one of his 42 years, and Matt feels his chest tighten at the thought that he might never get this close again before he’s forced to retire.

 

Maybe none of them will get this close again. Maybe this was their one chance. Maybe they’ve blown the only shot they’ll ever have.

 

Matt makes the mistake of looking back when they all start leaving the bench and his heart nearly breaks to see Jake hunched over himself, despondent, lips moving like he’s praying.

 

 

IV.

Matt is twenty-five years old and he was the only reason they didn’t get shut out in what should have been the best game they played all damn playoffs.

 

He sits in his stall, numb, when they finally get released to the locker room. It’s impossible to fight off this feeling that grows and grows the longer he spends thinking about what could have been. It’s a crashing, sinking, drowning feeling. He’s suffocating under the weight of his inadequacy, the way it was too little, too late. The way he couldn’t be enough.

 

There’s a flood filling the room, and they all sit there, not even trying to swim.

 

 

V.

Cassidy comes and says his piece even though he must know that the last thing any of them want to hear is how they missed their chance. Matt briefly hates the man for pulling out all the empty platitudes that he’s heard so many times.

 

(He doesn’t hate him, not really, nor does he hate Z when he stands to speak to them as well. He only has room to hate himself, his own mistakes and the wicked hand of fate that made the puck bounce in the Blues’ favor one too many times.)

 

“There’ll be more seasons.” Their captain says, forced through his injured jaw, says it like he’s throwing a life preserver into the sea that’s drowning them. “There’ll be more seasons and more playoffs, and definitely more chances to do it right. This isn’t the end.”

 

It certainly _feels_ like the end as they shower and change and pack up and begin to disperse.

 

Tuukka just looks angry now, the full force of his goaltender glare burning holes in the floor of the room. Matt wishes Tuukka would believe it when Chara tells him it’s not his fault, because from the fury in his gaze it’s obvious he’s tearing himself up inside.

 

He’s one of the few taking it worse than most, if that’s possible. The few who were there for the Blackhawks doing the exact same thing six years ago. They’re the ones putting on brave faces for the newer guys, doing their duty as veterans, going around shaking shoulders and handing out hugs and consolation, but it’s painfully evident how Krej’s heart is breaking and it’s hard to miss how Torey is about to curl in on himself as soon as he finds privacy.

 

It takes too long for Matt’s clumsy fingers to get his gear off and by the time he’s ready he’s already watched most of his teammates trudge out of the room in little ragged groups.

 

(No-one’s too absorbed in their own misery to let anyone go home alone. Despite how you just want to isolate yourself after a loss like this, you need someone to share it with, or it’ll eat you up from the inside out.)

 

Matt’s spared the worst of the media obligations, which is the smallest of graces. He has to avert his eyes from the way Marchy’s barely holding it together for the cameras. Bergy’s hovering near his friend looking devastated and worried and so, so sad, but he offers Matt a terse smile and jerks his chin towards the other side of the room.

Towards Jake.

 

Matt feels his stomach drop. Jake’s still in his pads, head in his hands, and Matt hates that he didn’t notice, hates that he was too wrapped up in himself to see the way his friend is taking it. He’s young and it’s only his second NHL season and he’s already learned to blame himself.

 

He sits down in the neighboring stall but he hasn’t got the words. He’s not sure if there are any. Jake moves, after a minute, when Matt presses a knee to his thigh in the hopes that the physical contact might ground him to the here and now. He looks up and there’s the tiniest twitch of his lips. Matt’s drowning but he can’t bring himself to wallow in it when someone else has sunk deeper. He allows that glimmer of a smile to bring him hope. 

 

 

VI.

Boston is inconsolable. She’s weeping from every pore at the cruel way her prize was snatched from her on her own soil. Matt spends a few days at his parents’ house after locker cleanout but it’s all he can take. His hometown has become a reminder of how close they were, how they let her down, how Matt let her down, and he has to leave. The thought of going back to his lonely apartment near the Garden and spending most of the summer in the place his dreams shattered is suffocating.

 

Which is why he feels like his head is finally breaching the surface when Jake calls and invites him to Alberta. He’s got some other guys coming later, he says, plans he’d made before the playoffs even started, but he wants Matt there now. It’s probably just that he’d rather not be alone in his quiet little lake house, not with the weight of their postseason hanging over him. Matt gets that, and he needs to be somewhere other than the town he couldn’t quite win the Cup for. So he flies out to Edmonton International, quick as he can.

 

Jake’s standing in arrivals looking broken and so, so lonely.

 

The first week drags on. Neither of them know what to do after losing something that was so nearly theirs, losing something that they’ve dreamed about their whole lives. They end up just sitting around in the house or on the adirondacks on the lakeside deck, eating their way through the half-stocked kitchen and mindlessly binging shitty netflix shows.

 

Matt doesn’t try to talk to Jake about how he’s obviously beating himself up real bad. He’s pretty sure that would be hypocritical.

 

He does convince Jake to call his mom, though, and he feels immediately justified when Jake smiles, properly, at something she says, seeming for a moment like some of the weight might have been lifted. Matt’s not seen much of Jake’s mom but she’s married to one NHL player and has raised another so it’s fair to say she knows how they take a loss. He’s never felt so grateful to her.

 

 

VII.

Matt is twenty-five years, six months and nineteen days old when he finally lets himself dream again.

 

It’s not the same dream he entertained at nine, nor is it exactly identical to the dream he let himself believe he could reach at eighteen. Those childish dreams were shattered by the boys in blue two months ago.

 

That summer, instead, proves one thing to him; the team is everything. You win together, you lose together. The contact with his teammates is his life raft. The thing that stops him sinking. They hang onto one another however they can and somehow they make it through the pain and the heavy, exhausting disappointment that plagues them.

 

After a full season with the Bruins, after the longest playoff run, it takes a warm evening at Bergy’s lakehouse for Matt to realise where the true strength lies.

 

It’s Bergy’s birthday and he invited most of them out to Quebec to celebrate. Matt guesses he just didn’t want to be alone on a day still overshadowed by the events of Game 7. His family are there, of course, they spent the morning with him, but his little kids can’t understand the heartbreak this group of guys went through. That’s something they’ll share for the rest of their lives.

 

There’s a mild breeze and a gentle rippling sound from the water lapping the little dock. He’s sat next to Jake on the edge of the decking, knees knocking together, a cold beer in his hand that he has hardly drunk enough of to be feeling as loose as he is. And although there’s a ruckus going on behind them, with Mac challenging Wags to a drunken table tennis match, Sean officiating loudly and basically every guy on the team cheering for one side or the other, Matt feels so calm.

 

This is Boston. This is the team that made it so damn far they almost got it all. He doesn’t think that’s ever going to stop hurting, not really, but he knows he couldn’t have gone through it with better people. Win together, lose together, that’s what Bergy said in the locker room once. Of course, back in the middle of the regular season all they’d been thinking of was the _winning_ part, the bright lure of the Cup almost tangible in their dreams. And of course he doesn’t wish the heartbreak of June on any one of the young men in this house.

 

But the _together_ part means more to him than it ever has. He knows that it’s given him the strength to keep his head above the water, knows that win or lose it’s the team he loves, this crazy group of people playing the game they love for the city they love. It’s enough, for now.

 

That and the promise of redemption that he dreams.

 

_It’s the same scene. It’s so familiar now. Matt’s on the ice, the culmination of his life’s dreams lofted above his head. He’s screaming along with the crowd that just watched their homegrown boy score the snipe of his career. He’s won it for Boston, for them all, and he’s never felt so happy. But it’s not just generic black and gold jerseys surrounding him like it always used to be._

 

_It’s Jake, smiling so wide it looks like his face is about to split, his joyful face flooding Matt with overwhelming pride. It’s Charlie, hair a mess, staring up at the Cup with tears and awe in his eyes. It’s Sean and Danton and all the young guys yelling and yelling because they just can’t hold it in._

 

_It’s the old guard, finally victorious; Tuukka slapping everyone in arms’ reach on the back, Torey full on crying, Krej bouncing his little girl in the air, Z grinning ear-to-ear, Bergy and Marchy clinging onto each other like they regret letting go long enough to do their own laps with the prize. It’s handshakes and hugs and everything he didn’t know how to dream of._

 

_It’s his family, and they’ve won together, like they lost together before. They came back and showed everyone just how hard they’ll fight when they’ve something to prove._

 

 

(They're the _goddamn Boston Bruins_. They'll prove them _all_ wrong, and Matt knows he'll do anything to be a part of it.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If there's any issues with characterization I'm sorry, I'm mostly a Jets girl so I'm not super up with all the members of the Bruins and which breakfast cereals they like, etcetera. désolé.
> 
> I haven't been able to find a gif of the moment that birthed this fic but you can find it on a recap of Grz's goal; it's literally just the way he doesn't even look happy and no-one cellys and jake came up hug him and they both look so resigned and it killed me.
> 
> lmk what you think! It makes me happy to make you happy so kudos and comments never fail to make my day :)


End file.
